A Brutally Honest Review UFC 319’s Main Event.

[Rockapotomuss]

-mandatory 60 second standups without dominant position and/or significant damage
-warnings and point deductions for repeated efforts to "point fight" in any way/shape/form

The rules should be written that at all times you must be attempting to do damage (and risk being caught in an armbar/triangle), or passing to dominant position AND trying to finish the fight. If you just take someone's back and land rabbit punches, refusing to take a risk and possibly lose the position, then you are warned, and if you keep doing it then you lose a point.

Again, boxing had to deal with the most effective form of boxing, dirty boxing, and ban it due to being boring to watch. MMA is inevitably going to have to do the same. But these rule changes take time. Boxing took over 100 years to fully deal with dirty boxing, and you could argue that there's still work to do in some cases.

Khamzat had dominant position, and you want to stand it up? Let’s just throw grappling in the garbage.

Why have points if you want to ban point fighting? This makes no sense.

DDP won 9 fights in a row and this was what it took to beat him. You can’t throw out the entire game because of one fight at the most elite level came down to exploiting one hole in DDP’s game. The solution is for the fighters to evolve.

 

[wolffanghameha]

need to thanks God for that as if Khamzat opened up heavy g&p he'd kill DDP with the amount of top control he had. If it was boring it was because it was just so one sided that Chimaev played with Dricus.

He didn't land heavier because to land heavier he'd give up space for Dricus to move and because Dricus put his head in a relatively safe position when crucifixed, where Khamzat had no space to generate power on strikes.
Nothing to do with playing with him. No doubt Khamzat wanted a finish.

 

[TrueBias]

Who didn't defend the TD? DDP
Who didn't stand up? DDP

I consider a cowardly way to win wall and stall, taking someone down against their will and holding them there for 25 minutes is dominance

Haha, you would wouldn't you.

Shit, im jealous. Wish that entertained me too.

 

[BullyKutta]

Khamzat will fight again.

You’ll tune in again.

 

[lostdog000]

lay and pray is always stood up by refs
the few standups last night were bad ones
ddp is great, but he was literally helpless most of the fight

 

[Tweak896]

See, if khazmat dictated where the fight goes, then his grappling confirmed that.

How is this considered a domination to be praised via octagon control, but immune to that being why the fight sucked?

Because they are professional fighters. If they want to not take damage and avoid getting finished they have survival skills.

Someone like Pico gets finished because he throws himself at his opponent while Leon usually hardly takes damage standing because he chooses to stay back. Same goes for grappling. You take chances to get up or reverse or you spend time fighting only the chokes.

 

[Gamer2k4]

Knocking out Brunson and Whittaker still counts towards a legacy. There’s more to life than just ‘title fights’.

Werdum was the first man to beat Fedor. It doesn’t somehow become less impressive because there was no belt on the line.

There's a massive difference between building a legacy and, as you put it, "being in Anderson Silva's GOAT conversation." Anderson Silva had a career (filled with plenty of wins and finishes) before he got the UFC belt too, you know.

 

[VenomCarnage]

There's a massive difference between building a legacy and, as you put it, "being in Anderson Silva's GOAT conversation." Anderson Silva had a career (filled with plenty of wins and finishes) before he got the UFC belt too, you know.

Absolutely, nobody is denying any of that. I’m one of the biggest Silva fans you’ll find.

My point is that Dricus’ run was starting to get into lofty altitudes itself, especially if he’d somehow won last night. I also said with 2-3 more wins after Chimaev.

Imagine a run of:

Brunson
Till
Whittaker
Strickland x2
Adesanya
Chimaev
Imavov
De Ridder
Hernandez

If he’d gotten to that point, I’m pretty sure comparisons to Silva would have been more than fair, especially if the stoppages had continued.

My point was that he was approaching the conversation. Someone who is that close to that sort of conversation, shouldn’t be on their back for 21 minutes of a fight, with no pre-fight injuries, totally unaware of how to stop rudimentary takedowns.

 

[FilipEmoFights]

Khamzat could have leg lock armbarred either of those crucifixed arms for nearly the whole fight, he either ignored it or just wanted to get a decision

 

[Mask Of Winters]

I love that the Khamzat Fanboi Club (KFC) intended to make the rest of us angry but it ended up backfiring and our pushback is making them pissed off now instead

 

[Aluminati]

Africa's messiah just spent more time on the crucifix than Jesus and somehow no one is upset with his piss poor performance.

 

[Alpha_T83]

Khamzat had dominant position, and you want to stand it up? Let’s just throw grappling in the garbage.

Why have points if you want to ban point fighting? This makes no sense.

DDP won 9 fights in a row and this was what it took to beat him. You can’t throw out the entire game because of one fight at the most elite level came down to exploiting one hole in DDP’s game. The solution is for the fighters to evolve.

We will see. If control wrestling and fighting for points continues the way it is, then the rules will need to deal with it.

But if the fighters evolve and are able to counter it, then you will be right.

 

[kwijyboy]

Its back to lay and pray. There needs to be a clock that starts like a shot clock.

 

[Darkavius]

Khamzat had dominant position, and you want to stand it up? Let’s just throw grappling in the garbage.

Why have points if you want to ban point fighting? This makes no sense.

DDP won 9 fights in a row and this was what it took to beat him. You can’t throw out the entire game because of one fight at the most elite level came down to exploiting one hole in DDP’s game. The solution is for the fighters to evolve.

I don't want to speak for T83 but what I would be open to changing parts of the rules where Chimaev had DDP by the waist and was just throwing nothing knees for minutes. Also in instances where fighters are against the fence and all that is happening is small knees against the thighs or foot stomps like what was done in Usman vs. Masvidal 1 or Aldo vs. Bautista. In situations like those I think stand ups and separations need to occur because nothing is happening. No one is trying to move the action "forward". We can't dismiss it when we watched it with Shevchenko/Grasso and complained but overlook it when Chimaev does it.

We understand that guys like DDP need to have better TDD and that's understandable. However, with dominant wrestlers I do think there needs to be an expectation of more ground and pound or a sub finish. It seems a little strange that we have these amazing wrestlers and yet the amount of ground and pound seems lacking. Based on the wrestling ability of some of these fighters I don't think it's crazy to expect more one-sided fights similar to Khabib vs. Barboza.

 

[Ozze]

"He ragdolls opponents in the first three minutes - boring, predictable, no jeopardy"?

"Oh no! Look at this guy finishing his opponents in under a round! So lame!! Booooooo"

That's you TS.

 

[Rockapotomuss]

I don't want to speak for T83 but what I would be open to changing parts of the rules where Chimaev had DDP by the waist and was just throwing nothing knees for minutes. Also in instances where fighters are against the fence and all that is happening is small knees against the thighs or foot stomps like what was done in Usman vs. Masvidal 1 or Aldo vs. Bautista. In situations like those I think stand ups and separations need to occur because nothing is happening. No one is trying to move the action "forward". We can't dismiss it when we watched it with Shevchenko/Grasso and complained but overlook it when Chimaev does it.

We understand that guys like DDP need to have better TDD and that's understandable. However, with dominant wrestlers I do think there needs to be an expectation of more ground and pound or a sub finish. It seems a little strange that we have these amazing wrestlers and yet the amount of ground and pound seems lacking. Based on the wrestling ability of some of these fighters I don't think it's crazy to expect more one-sided fights similar to Khabib vs. Barboza.

You can't do that because then fighters will intentionally stall to get stood up. The less rules the better. This is fighting.

 

[Darkavius]

You can't do that because then fighters will intentionally stall to get stood up. The less rules the better. This is fighting.

That would be the logical thinking but you can't automatically assume that will happen. When a fighter is down and another fighter is just hitting his knees against another guys thigh but not doing any significant strikes. There's nothing happening. Both guys are stalling. One guy just has dominant position so he does not want to give it up. In the case of Chimaev/DDP there was no reason why Chimaev could not have tried to punch Dricus in the side of the face.

We generally agree during stand up there are people who point fight but we should admit as well that there is point wrestling. As dominant as people like Chimaev and Merab are in wrestling there should be much more significant ground and pound. The goal of the rule change is to not cause more stalling but to make it so that wrestlers actually fight and to reinforce the rule that the very first and most important criteria of a fight is to cause damage.

 

[JBJ was here]

That would be the logical thinking but you can't automatically assume that will happen. When a fighter is down and another fighter is just hitting his knees against another guys thigh but not doing any significant strikes. There's nothing happening. Both guys are stalling. One guy just has dominant position so he does not want to give it up. In the case of Chimaev/DDP there was no reason why Chimaev could not have tried to punch Dricus in the side of the face.

The solution is actually pretty simple. Side control, full mount, and back control are such dominant positions that meekly accepting them without even trying to attack or improve position can never be intelligent defense. If you lie like a lump in one of those positions, not so much as bucking your hips or hand-fighting, you lose by TKO.

 

[Darkavius]

The solution is actually pretty simple. Side control, full mount, and back control are such dominant positions that meekly accepting them without even trying to attack or improve position can never be intelligent defense. If you lie like a lump in one of those positions, not so much as bucking your hips or hand-fighting, you lose by TKO.

But that does not address the issue of holding someone up against the cage and not advancing on either side (i.e. Aldo vs. Bautista). It also does not address what we saw in DDP/Chimaev where a fighter will be down and the other fighter will only throw light knees against the other person's body but never trying to cause significant damage.

 

[mangokush]

Khamzat lived up to the nick name of "Borzzz" in that hugfest because it was extremely boring

Even the crowd who was on his side in the beginning was booing all that hugging towards the end

Khamzat fans who are defending that hugfest better keep up that same energy when other huggers in the UFC starting hugging like that